Originally Posted by Paul Markham

5 years ago a very senior and experienced paysite owner and sponsor told me that loads of sign ups come in from unknown avenues, thus allowing some sites to pay more than others.

After running a paysite 20 months I can see what he meant. After a year we upped Rev Share to 60%, just spent a long time looking at the stats and will now up them again to 65% and it rises the more joins an affiliate sends every month.

Our ratios are around 1-500 on affiliate traffic, it's the non affiliate traffic that turns the tables and allows us to pay more. Most of it is from unknown sources, type in, returning members, content store and Yahoo/Google images type sites. This traffic does not even go via CCBILL or wipes out the cookie they install.

Do we spend $1,000s on a program that picks up 10% of the unknown surfers or just pay out more?

We decided to pay out more.

Maybe this is how other programs can afford to do it. Unless they can upsell a lot better than most.

Affiliates need to work out where they are best rewarded sending traffic and not go by the figures being offered by sponsors. The figures that matter are the ones on your bank statement.